It's official: Samsung will unveil its would-be iPad beater, now called the Galaxy Tab - sounds like a fizzy drink - just ahead of the IFA consumer electronics show early next month.
Samsung Galaxy Tab
According to a vid just posted on the Samsung website, the 7in Tab will run Android 2.2, do video calls - though the only …

COMMENTS

Allshare

If implemented correctly, this will provide a decent step up from the ipad - the ability to stream from your home media library. A serious omission by Apple IMO, and one I suspect they will have to close if the rest of this package is competitive.

Ah, but you can stream!

@Allshare

There is a (recently released) app called Air Video for the iPad / iPhone / Touch which allows you to stream media from your home PC, even encoding it on the fly. I've installed the app on my iPad and can watch virtually any movie stored on my home network, including MKV's. Admittedly, this should have been incorporated by Apple from the start and I hope that Jobs and his goon squad police don't remove it from the app store.

As for the arrival of this Samsung, I hope it's the start of some great non-Apple tablets in both Android and Windows forms. Whilst I love my iPad, I'm looking forward to getting another pad of my own and leaving the Apple device with my wife and kids. I just hope that the Android / Windows devices are as user-friendly, long lasting, reliable and wonderful to use as the iPad.

Alternatively...

It might not stream media from your home network, but it may be a server - allowing you to stream media from the pad to your (Samsung) TV.

It's also possible it will do both, of course.

Mind you, one of the myriad of servers I have set up on my home network will happily stream stuff out to pretty much anything with a web browser including my N97, my wife's iPhone, PSP, laptop, etc., etc. It picks up the device type from the browser string and re-codes stuff on the fly for the device as necessary.

I'm sure an iPad wouldn't have any trouble either, but it's not exactly "out of the box" functionality like it might be on this.

Wait for it...

There's still a load of rumours online about the resolution being 480 x 800, so I wouldn't start gloating yet. There's another school of thought that it will be 1024 x 600, but that's the point - this is still rumours. At least the iPad is real, and is selling by the boatload *in the real world*.

For crying out loud. Ship already!

Anyone else getting tired of companies announcing their tablets months and months into vaporware territory? Kudos at least go to Archos that actually shipped a direct competitor to the iPad, and honorable mentions go to Acer's touchscreen laptop and Dell's oversized android phone.

But that's about only one tablet-ish-thing reviewed a month compared to the scads of announcements. Sure, it's great fun* to have reasons for more Apple-related flame wars. But for all the bluster, mentions of iPad killers sort of vanish once they actually ship and numbers come in, thus my mention of JooJoo last time.

So I say this to big multinational companies whom are unaffected by my opinions: either make awesome systems that truly, actually have the power to at least make a decent showing in sales, or stop announcing them ages before they ship. Actions speak louder than words.

Your ship, Sir

Launch == unveil or sell?

I didn't notice the next week time frame, admittedly, but the key word the article used -what prompted my diatribe- was 'unveil', not 'ship'. Apple 'unveiled' the iPad months before actually shipping. Ballmer 'unveiled' the HP Slate at CES, and it's still not shipping. The Crunchpad was 'unveiled' as far back as July 2009.

Is Samsung going to make it possible to purchase the device in 8 days? In stores? WIll there be reviews beforehand? I would love to be proven wrong, but I am skeptical that next week will hold much more than the formal announcement, price and specs, and perhaps pre-ordering.

Finally!

This is the kind of tablet I've been waiting for since the iPad was announced - basically a Nexus One writ large. I can't believe it's taken manufacturers so long to realise nobody's going to buy and Android 1.5 or 1.6 device. Now to find out what they're going to charge for it - no I am not willing to pay iPad-style prices.

The Devil

Is in the apps and the OS updates.

If Samsung expect to push this out and then move on to the next project (this is the status quo for 99% of CE manufacturers unfortunately) then it will fail or, at best, be a niche player in a market dominated by apple.

I have yet to see any signs that any non-fruity CE manufacturer gets this yet. Time will tell I suppose.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh....

Want.

At least, I do if the screen resolution is higher than 800x480, otherwise there doesn't seem to be much advantage over my current Galaxy S phone. I'd like to see at least 1280x768, but 1024x768 would probably do.

As I've been saying for a while, it's going to be an interesting 12 months.

Screen res

My God, it's full of stars

Well, look what Samsung have dug up on the moon. It looks interesting, but at 7", it falls between the iPhone and the IPad, in size. This does mean that, if they've kept the weight down, it could address the problem that the iPad is too damn big for some people to carry around, comfortably, for prolonged periods, but it does not deal with the "yes, but what's it for?" factor.

It needs to be full of Apps - Apps that make a lot more sense, on a 7 inches display, than they do on a phone - in order for it to make sense, as a product.

Price, Price, Price

Why is everyone so fixated on price? Have you not noticed the absolute shite coming from China? Yes, it's cheaper than the iPad, but it has a terrible screen, old version of Android, a resistive touch surface, etc.

Samsung is a great company and won't likely make a crap-quality device. Just don't expect it to be significantly less (or less at all) than the iPad.